Welcome to the annual Autumn Symposium of the Finnish Association of Applied Linguistics (AFinLA) at the University of Turku on November 14-16, 2013. The theme of the symposium is "Language Users of Tomorrow". We welcome proposals for papers, posters and workshops related to the theme as well as to other areas of applied linguistics.

The working methods of the symposium will include individual presentations, poster presentations and workshops. Our invited speakers are

Michał Krzyżanowski (MA, PhD, Dr. Habil) is Full Professor of Media and Communication Studies at Örebro University, Sweden, which he joined in 2013 from the University of Aberdeen in the UK. He has previously also worked at Lancaster University (UK), University of Vienna (Austria), and at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan (Poland). In 2011, he was also a Visiting Professor in Media and Communication Studies at Örebro University. He has guest-lectured widely, including at the Universities of Brussels (VUB), Florence (EUI), Ljubljana, Milan (Bicocca), Tilburg or Umeå. He is also a recurrent faculty member of the Summer Schools in Methods and Techniques of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR). Michał is Co-Editor of the Journal of Language and Politics as well as serves on editorial boards of, inter alia, Critical Discourse Studies.

Michał’s core research is located within the tradition of Critical Discourse Analysis and in particular its Discourse-Historical (or ‘Viennese’) Approach. He also works extensively on developing new approaches in critical discourse studies (especially CDA/DHA) and qualitative research methodology where his main methodological contributions are at the intersections of critical discourse analysis and ethnography or conceptual history.

Originating in language and discourse studies, his work is interdisciplinary and contributes to a variety of fields including: applied and critical text and discourse analysis; sociolinguistics; critical media, communication and journalism studies; political sociology and European integration research; critical ethnography and organisation research.

Crispin Thurlow is Professor (Language and Communication) in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington where he also holds adjunct appointments in Linguistics and Anthropology. In 2007, he received the University of Washington’s Distinguished Teaching Award, and he currently directs the university’s MA Cultural Studies program and its Project for Interdisciplinary Pedagogy. His research examines how language and other semiotic modes work to produce social difference/inequality in key domains of contemporary life. This work draws on a range of academic traditions, but especially sociolinguistics, critical discourse studies, linguistic anthropology and cultural studies. Crispin’s books include Digital Discourse: Language in the New Media (Oxford, 2011) and Tourism Discourse: Language and Global Mobility (Palgrave, 2010) which was received the prize for the best book in International & Intercultural Communication (2011) from the USA’s National Communication Association.

Camilla Wide is Professor of Scandinavian languages at the University of Turku. Her main research interests focus on spoken language variation and changes in interactionist and construction grammar approaches. She is also interested in grammaticalization, sociolinguistics, and especially in Finland Swedish from a pluricentric perspective. She works in several networks such as the N'CLAV–Nordic collaboration on language variation, Turku Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies(TUCEMEMS), and Working Group on Non-dominating Varieties of pluricentric Languages. She runs several projects in this research domain, such as Svenska som pluricentriskt språk – pragmatik, interaktion och kommunikation i Sverige och Finland (2013–2020), Svenskan i Finland - i dag och i går (2010–2017). She is a member of several Scandinavian editorial boards, has written articles in Journals and book chapters in edited volumes. She is the co-author of an edited book Konstruktioner i finlandssvensk syntax. Skriftspråk, samtal och dialekter (2009), and Special Issue on the Nordic Languages and Linguistic Typology (2011).